Paris has been kept on the alert this week by
rumours of the approaching substitution of a definitive Parliamentary Ministry for the existing Ministry of transition. The reports were at first definite and peremptory ; but day after day they have become more vague, and have lost credit. An active canvass preparatory to the next Presidential election has been commenced by the friends of General Cavaignac. Their efforts are in danger of being neutral- ized by the pertinacious determination of the Socialist and Red sections of the Republican party each to bring forward a candidate of its own. The rejection by the Assembly of the motion for re- scinding the exile of the Bourbons has relieved Louis Napoleon from his apprehensions of seeing the Prince de Joinville started as an opposing candidate. At present, Louis Napoleon seems bent on eliciting from the Assembly a declaration that the late electoral law, narrowing the franchise, does not apply to the Presidential election. Whether he has been instigated to this course by a be- lief that the continuance of universal suffrage will be favourable to his chances, or by the notion that he may deter the moderate Conservatives from opposing his reelection by threatening to throw himself into the arms of the Republicans, is but a difference of roads to the same end,
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